Documenting Young and Passionate New Farmers

Greenhorns is the prod­uct of pro­ducer and direc­tor Severine von Tscharner Fleming. Severine grew up on a farm, stud­ied agri­cul­ture in col­lege, and finally became a young sus­tain­able farmer her­self. She was inspired to make the doc­u­men­tary by the pro­lif­er­a­tion of neg­a­tive mes­sages on farming.

“I was in col­lege at UC Berkeley,” Severine told Organic Connections. “I had been orga­niz­ing edu­ca­tional sem­i­nars, work­shops and speak­ers to talk about sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture, and then I got the idea to do a film fes­ti­val. The movies that I was show­ing about farm­ing were all great, but they were kind of neg­a­tive. So I felt as if we needed one that was a bit more pos­i­tive. When some of the film­mak­ers whose films I was pre­mier­ing came out, I said, ‘Let’s go on an adven­ture and shoot some film,’ and they said, ‘Great!’ That was the start.”

As she trav­eled across the US shoot­ing the movie, Severine dis­cov­ered young farm­ers work­ing sus­tain­ably through­out the country—many more than peo­ple may think are out there. “It’s funny, because when I started, it was just a hunch, like, ‘Man, I bet a lot of peo­ple are feel­ing this feel­ing!’” Severine recounted. “I had appren­ticed in col­lege dur­ing the sum­mers and so I knew that there was an organic farm­ing scene in Northern California. I was aware there was some­thing going on, but I didn’t real­ize at the time how wide­spread it was and I’m still con­tin­u­ally amazed.”

In the film, we see numer­ous inspir­ing sto­ries of young peo­ple start­ing and run­ning farms of many types. One cou­ple met in col­lege in Pittsburgh, decided to leave the city behind and are now farm­ing wheat in West Virginia and sell­ing their bread to local towns. A young man in Georgia grew up on a farm, moved away, then real­ized how much it meant to him and returned, help­ing con­vert his father’s con­ven­tional farm to a sus­tain­able one. A San Francisco woman who had been watch­ing a broad vacant lot from the roof of her build­ing tracked down the owner, asked if she could farm there, and he agreed. There are many more.

The tales are as dis­tinc­tive as the peo­ple involved. “It’s a very indi­vid­ual ques­tion as to why farm­ers decide to do it,” Severine said. “For me, it has a lot to do with spend­ing time out­doors, being a pro­duc­tive mem­ber of soci­ety, being polit­i­cal, and hav­ing the space and time to think my own thoughts. For oth­ers it has to do with cli­mate change and relo­cal­iz­ing the food sys­tem. Some peo­ple are pas­sion­ate about plant breed­ing, or they’re pas­sion­ate about her­itage ani­mals, or they’re pas­sion­ate about cheese.”

While she was film­ing, Severine found her­self orga­niz­ing events to help get new farm­ers started. “As we were try­ing to raise the money to make the film, we were also fig­ur­ing out what story we were going to tell and what the issues of the young farm­ers were,” Severine explained. “When we began film­ing, we were trav­el­ing to var­i­ous farms and inter­view­ing dif­fer­ent farm­ers, and some­how it turned into orga­niz­ing events. There’s not really been a line between the doc­u­men­tary process and the com­mu­nity orga­niz­ing part of it; throw­ing par­ties for farm­ers has been a big thing since the begin­ning. They are never only par­ties, how­ever; they’re always a party with a lec­ture or a party with a workshop.

“The pur­pose of the par­ties is to bring farm­ers together with non-farmers. Those who are not yet farm­ing can start think­ing more prac­ti­cally about how they’re going to start farm­ing. There’s also the oppor­tu­nity for peer-to-peer net­work­ing. It’s about build­ing a strong com­mu­nity so that the peo­ple who are enter­ing agri­cul­ture feel sup­ported, know what the next steps are, and have a sense of what to expect. They can become a part of the gos­sip, the flir­ta­tion and the eating—the cul­ture of farming—and they’re not all alone.”

Thus was formed the Greenhorns non­profit orga­ni­za­tion, the pur­pose of which is to recruit, pro­mote and sup­port young farm­ers in America. Greenhorns’ net­work of young farm­ers has expanded beyond Severine’s wildest imag­in­ings, as she dis­cov­ers in her reg­u­lar trav­els around the coun­try to host events for new farm­ers. “We have 7,000 in our net­work cur­rently,” she said. “I’m on my way home now from Idaho, Eastern Washington and New Mexico, and it’s every­where! We had a the­ater in Bellingham, Washington, and there were 150 young farm­ers there. We were in Spokane and there’s a whole urban farm scene in Spokane. Baltimore has an amaz­ing urban farm­ing scene. Philadelphia . . . Even in places that don’t have par­tic­u­larly hos­pitable cli­mates and are post-industrial cities, if it’s an area that is afford­able to live, then a lot of peo­ple with energy are mov­ing there and are get­ting involved in some­thing that feels real, pow­er­ful, life affirm­ing and very relevant.”

Click any image above to see a larger version.

As the film rolls out in show­ings, Greenhorns is ask­ing for dona­tions both in money and organic food from local pur­vey­ors for events

Part of the Greenhorn mis­sion is to make a dif­fer­ence in US farm pol­icy, which, through­out the years, has sup­ported main­stream indus­trial agri­cul­ture. Out of the Greenhorns orga­ni­za­tion and projects grew the National Young Farmers’ Coalition, a group of young and sus­tain­able farm­ers orga­nized for col­lec­tive suc­cess, who are now push­ing to have their voices heard in Washington and to gain sup­port through the Farm Bill. A sur­vey of a thou­sand young farm­ers, posted on the National Young Farmers’ Coalition web­site, enu­mer­ates the bar­ri­ers to start­ing up a sus­tain­able farm today. These include access to cap­i­tal and land—and pro­grams such as the USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA), formed to assist begin­ning farm­ers, are cur­rently not of much assistance.

“The major chal­lenge that we face is access to land,” said Severine. “We have also found that the FSA, which is a gov­ern­ment loan agency, is not really that inter­ested in loan­ing money to new small and sus­tain­able farms. Ultimately the char­ac­ter of the food sys­tem that we want is one that is inclu­sive of new play­ers, and also one that is more diver­si­fied and more region­ally ori­ented. If that is the char­ac­ter of the food sys­tem we want, that will of neces­sity mean that we have to allow for more diver­si­fi­ca­tion. So in a sense we’re ask­ing to have a chance to par­tic­i­pate in this restruc­tur­ing of a sys­tem that many peo­ple agree needs restruc­tur­ing. That’s essen­tially the core of our polit­i­cal argument.

“We want a stake in America,” Severine con­cluded. “I think that there is a huge demand for the prod­ucts that we want to grow, such as pas­tured pork, pas­tured poul­try, fresh veg­eta­bles and fruit; the mar­ket is just vora­cious. That means that we have an oppor­tu­nity. There are a lot of farm­ers retir­ing, and not all of them have heirs—in Iowa 42 per­cent of farm­ers that say they will retire within the next three years don’t have an heir, and Iowa is one of the more con­cen­trated places. We’re going to keep on, and it would be nice for fed­eral and state pol­icy to point us in that direc­tion; an acknowl­edg­ment that the course that we’ve been on with our food sys­tem is not sus­tain­able, and that we can bring the needed changes.”

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion on Greenhorns’ film and move­ment, visit www.thegreenhorns.net.

To learn more about the National Young Farmers’ Coalition, visit www.youngfarmers.org.